A Beautiful Wedding
by theCalliope
Summary: Spock and Nyota are getting married. But they have a lot to work out first


_**A/N: This is (yet another) angst story. I'm guessing it will be seven parts**_

"How does one lose touch with their parents?" Spock asked Nyota as they sat knee to knee beneath a Starfleet-issue dining table. Nyota scanned a PADD for her latest homework assignment while Spock shovelled a plate of leftover spaghetti into his mouth. It was a brief moment of respite from the bustle of exams and preparations for their new assignment on the Enterprise. And congratulations. There were ever so many congratulations.

At first, Nyota had thought that she could stay discreet, slowly tell a few friends here and there, and then her brother and then her parents. But news travelled quickly, and by noon of the next day students and instructors, people she hardly knew were stopping her in the hallways to give her their best wishes, craning their necks to see her ring, to confirm the latest gossip.

"Oh my God, I am so happy for you!" a cadet with blond hair and a beautiful face declared that afternoon, running towards Nyota and catching her in an unexpected hug. And for a minute, Nyota tried to place the face—she had seen the girl around a couple classes, but was there somewhere else? And then she realized that the girl had been her lab partner in her second-year _Emergency Repairs_ class. They had spent late nights in the lab, manually calibrating machinery, listing to recordings of engine noises to diagnose the problems, making engine lubricant out of orange juice. One night when they had been repairing a shot-out thruster, waiting for the all-purpose joining gel to slowly conform to its well, Nyota had asked,

"So what sort of assignment are you hoping for after school?"

And the girl had frowned and shrugged and said,

"Oh, I don't really want an assignment."

And Nyota had been shocked and asked,

"Well, what are you doing at Starfleet Academy then?" with a bit more force and disdain than she had intended.

"I dunno," the girl had said, "It seems like a good thing to get an education. And it's free. And my Mom's in it."

And the girl had gone on to say that what she really wanted to do was be a mom, and go back to Romania and live a simple life. Or at least she thought she did.

It was a few weeks later that Nyota realized that the girl was the daughter of Admiral Minnie May Larsen, who as a starship captain had been extremely well known for charting most of the beta quadrant.

Later that afternoon, after hugging her old lab partner back for a while, Nyota had gone to AWA. They were a sorority really, but there weren't any sororities allowed in Starfleet, so they were the _Association for Women in Areospace_. Nyota had no idea why they had invited her to join, except maybe her appearance and the fact that she substantially raised the grade point average that they had to report to National. And after she'd stepped into their meeting, and they'd finished business (big party at _Avrum's Lounge_ next week), and everyone had complimented the person on her left it was time for announcements.

"Nyota has an announcement," the president said, cutting off anyone who might have tried to speak.

"Spock and I are getting married," Nyota said, once everyone had gone silent, holding out the hand with the ring on it so they could see it.

And she'd never imagined that she was the type of girl who would smile and show off her ring finger, but here she was.

"How did he ask you?" one girl asked, and Nyota responded that there wasn't much to tell really, they had been walking in the rose garden, the one where a bush was planted for every person that gave their life in service of Starfleet, and in front of the tall white one, he'd got on his knees and asked her.

"What did he say?" the same girl asked.

"That he would be honoured if I were to spend the rest of my life with him."

"And what did you say?"

"That I would be honoured to spend the rest of my life with him as well."

And then there was a round of titters. Despite the excitement, Spock certainly was an odd fellow.

"Any more announcements?" the president asked after the questions had subsided.

"Any more announcements?" another girl echoed in jest, "Did anyone have a baby today?"

And everyone, including Nyota laughed.

The only one who didn't seem to be happy about it was Christine. She was the first person Nyota had told, after Spock had brought her back from the rose garden, wary of curfew.

Nyota didn't know Christine particularly well, but she didn't know a lot of people in her dorm, and as she walked towards her room, she decided that she wanted a little bit more excitement than going to bed with her ring on her finger and telling people in the morning. So she'd pounded on Christine's door, and she'd opened it in surprise.

"Spock just proposed," Nyota had said matter-of-factly before Christine could get a word out.

"Congratulations," she'd replied, inviting her to sit down, but Nyota could tell that she wasn't really happy. She had none of the excitement Nyota had expected.

She wondered if maybe she'd come at a really inopportune time, maybe something bad had just happened. She knew Christine's oldest brother was sick, maybe he'd taken a turn for the worse or something. But instead, she wailed,

"I'm never going to get married!"

And for a minute, Nyota had stood confused, wondering if Christine didn't know that marriage wasn't a zero sum game.

"I'm sorry," Christine had gone on in bursts, "I know I should be happy for you, but I'm twenty-seven years old and still in school and don't have much chance of graduating this year, either. And the doctor told me a couple of weeks back that I have chronic depression, and I mean who's going to want to date someone with that and no job, and I don't even look that great either."

And Nyota had taken her hand and told her that it wasn't Ancient England or something, people got married at all ages, and she shouldn't think she had to be perfect either, there were also guys with depression.

"I guess so," she had agreed after a lot of prompting, and stopped crying, and eventually Nyota said goodbye and went to bed.

They had met in first year, when Christine had needed to retake a bunch of lower-level courses to get into nursing. She had originally gone in for engineering—she had a strong interest in medical science, but she thought she could make medical devices and medical equipment. But she'd stopped liking it early on, and by the end of third year, she'd starting failing badly, not being able to keep up with the material.

"My parents laughed at me," Christine had told her at the time, "They said they'd always known I was a nurse. Said that I was free and independent and they had to let me do my thing, and who knows maybe I'd really like it, but deep down they'd always thought I'd quit and go into something more medical."

Nyota wasn't sure what she thought of those parents. If they'd just spoken up, Christine would already be moaning about how she couldn't find a man in space. For Nyota, what she did after high school had been a family decision. She'd got into the Langman, the most prestigious linguistics institute on Earth, but her father had talked her out of it,

"You could go to the Langman," he'd said, "But unless you're at the very top, if you want a good job afterwards, you'll be waiting for someone to die. On the other hand, Starfleet is hungry for women officers and I'm sure whatever you do, you'll get an excellent deal, and even if you don't, they'll always take care of you."

And she didn't want to sell herself out for stability at age seventeen, but after a few more talks with her father, she agreed. And it was hard to tell. Maybe if she'd disobeyed him, she'd be famous. Maybe she'd be translating washing machine instructions for pocket change.

Regardless, she'd felt sorry for Chekov when she'd seen first seen him at the Academy. He was a math prodigy and she knew that he was in the same boat. And sure, he'd have a lot of chance to make use of his math genius, but if you looked at who won the Fields Medal and Wolf Prize and the Bocher, none of them worked for Starfleet.

The Chekovs were kind of family friends. Her father had acquired his father's company, which had then acquired a subsidiary of a company that her father partially owned, or something like that. It had happened in the midst of her parent's divorce, so she was a little fuzzy on the details. But that first week, she'd bought Chekov a beer (consumed in the student lounge, of course, because he still wasn't legal), to commiserate about how having rich parents was totally not worth the money. Or maybe it wasn't being rich that was the problem. Maybe their fathers just happened to have similar personalities, and that was what made them such a dynamic duo.

They had starting by just sipping beer and sharing memories, but then they had started downing whole cans, and then they were sitting on the floor, with a bottle of Pavel's vodka on between them, alternately taking swigs. This reminded Nyota of how their fathers had always got together in the sitting room on Sunday, taking shots of rye and smoking cigars, talking about the old country. Different old countries, but the same nostalgia, where prices were low, commerce was free, and women were cheap and did what you paid them for.

Pavel's father was still married to his mother, a plump, grey-haired Russian woman who never seemed to know what was going on, except what was happening in front of her. But he still drunkenly told her about when his father had taken him to St. Petersburgh and one of the first places they'd stopped was a high class brothel. His father had pushed a wad of cash into his hand and walked ahead, bantering with a girl who looked a bit weather-worn in Russian that he couldn't follow. He'd gone outside quickly, and when his father asked, he said that a police officer had accosted him because he was under eighteen, and dragged him outside and he'd used all his money to bribe him.

Pavel laughed as he said this, as if he thought he'd been really clever, taking the last sip of a can of beer while Nyota held the vodka.

"But I bet your dad didn't do stuff like this with you," he joked, and with the alcohol, Nyota thought this was hilariously funny. So funny she threw her head back and laughed. So funny that she picked up the bottle of vodka and hit the ground with it. So funny that the bottle broke.

Spock came up behind her and picked her up under the arms.

"It is time to go home," he told her, lifting her over his shoulder. Most of the students in the lounge knew, or at least suspected that they were involved, and even if they didn't, it wasn't unusual for Spock to carry off drunk students. Just last week, a boy had passed out, and he'd taken him to the infirmary and given him intravenous fluids before sending him off to bed. He was supposed to write a report, but he never did. When he was still a student, a girl in his class had been drinking with a couple of friends, and they'd hidden her in a closet so that she wouldn't be written up by the supervising instructor, and they'd been so drunk that they'd forgotten about her, and she'd choked to death on her own vomit.

Spock had been close friends with her, and although he didn't say anything, Nyota could tell that he wasn't quite over it. Every year, he went around collecting money for her scholarship fund. Just a couple of months ago, he 'd had lunch with her father.

"I am not very good at judging human expressions," he'd said afterwards, "But just seemed _haunted_."

Then he'd gone off stormily to do grading, and Nyota hadn't seen him for the rest of the evening.

Nyota had only been thirteen when the girl had died. She remembered because she and her mom had fought about it.

"You better not be going out drinking!" her mom had demanded as she took off to go meet her friend at a free physics lecture at the local college.

And she'd patiently explained how a girl in the paper dying from drinking didn't actually increase the probability of anyone else dying from drinking. And besides, she and Mantha always went to public lectures on Fridays, and she'd never questioned them before.

And her mother gave a deep sigh, and if she almost wished that her daughter would rebel a bit, as if she'd always imagined having a daughter who was into clothes and makeup, and spent her Friday nights dating popular guys instead of going to physics lectures with her pimple-faced best friend from kindergarten.

Spock still had the programme from the girl's funeral pinned to his bulletin board. Parts of it were covered with other papers: Comm. messages, notes from students, receipts for expenses, so it looked like it might have remained there by accident, but Nyota knew Spock better than that. The picture, a girl with big dark eyes was always visible, as was the name in fancy script:

ELANOR AURELIA FLOREZ

Nyota opened the program once, while Spock was in the bathroom and saw that a boyfriend was mentioned. She knew who he was, she'd seen him in the news, one of Starfleet's top hostage negotiators having safely defused a major incident at Central Bank. The article had mentioned that he was married to a Southern women with two young children: a daughter and an autistic son. He'd certainly moved on while Spock was still collecting donations and visiting her father. But being Vulcan, questions like_ were you in love with her_ didn't seem to translate, no matter how many times Nyota asked them. Or maybe he just didn't want to answer.

After that night with Pavel, he took her to the infirmary and checked every vital sign twice, and then he carried her to his quarters. He didn't care that she threw up all over his bedding.

"The unit is self-cleaning," he kept telling her. She slept that night, but he stayed up, counting the seconds between her breaths.

The next morning, when he asked her what had happened, she'd lied to him. Said that they'd just gone overboard. It was hard to gauge how much you were drinking from a bottle without a glass. And he'd shrugged and not pursued it.

And then she had a ring on her hand, and they were sitting knee to knee, and he was asking,

"Why have you not yet told your parents?"

* * *

**_A/N2: This is a bit of a departure of from my usual characterization of Nyota ... and I haven't done her POV except in humour stories either. I'd appreciate your feedback._**


End file.
